Data Recovery from Encrypted Flash Drives

Flash drives are common today. Technical expertise is not at all necessary to use data on a flash drive. Some USB drives are encrypted and some are not. Basically, a user can encrypt their data before storing it in the flash drive. Another way of encrypting is that the drive itself carries an on-board encryption software. This software helps with security and privacy issues. Suppose, you store an office document in your flash drive and it contains all usernames and passwords for your online financial records. Files such such as credit cards and PayPal are saved to this USB drive. Think about this, how bad would it be if your flash drive was to fall into the wrong hands? One way of avoiding this issue would be for you to encrypt your data or the USB flash drive itself. Make it password protected so that you can add a level of security to your data. By doing this, your data is safely stored on the drive away from prying eyes.

But, what if the encrypted flash drive started failing and not working properly as you tried to access this same important file that contains all your passwords? Example, you plug in the flash drive, your computer does not detect it or you are not able to see any of your files, or even worst; you lost the password that you assigned to the drive. Is your data gone forever? Data recovery from a flash drive itself can be problematic at times and it gets even more complicated when it comes to recovering encrypted data from a flash drive. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the data is unrecoverable but it will make it that much more complicated for a data recovery expert to retrieve this lost data for you. If you are able to find a data recovery expert specializing in flash based memory recovery, then data recovery is still possible.

Locked out of Crypted Flash Drives, Headaches Ensue.

Once the problem is identified and it is apparent that your data is not accessible, it is a good idea to attempt write-protection on your flash drive. By doing this, you can make sure that the existing data cannot be overwritten. If you overwrite the data, then you are making the situation even worse and greatly reducing the chances of data recovery. After write protecting of your flash drive, you can always try a file recovery tool as you really have nothing left to lose as the data is write-protected. If you are still unable to recover your data, then you should immediately contact an expert data recovery company that specializes in recovering data from encrypted flash drives.

If your flash memory chips are physically damaged on your USB device, getting your data back will be difficult. There are different factors that will determine if the flash drive can be recovered. The quality of your device, the quantity of data written to it, what type of damage (physical, logical) can be all a deciding factor. Thus, you should realize that no flash drive is completely safe and dependable. So, instead of having to run after data recovery specialist once your device breaks, you should always have the data backed up and by doing this avoid all data loss related hassles. In fact, the encryption is not the real culprit here. When performing data recovery from encrypted flash drives as well as non-encrypted flash drives, they all share similar risks of complete data loss. It is true that encryption makes the process of data recovery more difficult. So, be wise enough to backup your data to save your time, effort and money involved in data recovery.